Excel first steps

Welcome

• this session is 🌶: a beginner-level introduction
• we’ll get going properly at 13.35
• if you can’t access the chat, you might need to join our Teams channel: tinyurl.com/kindnetwork
• you’re very welcome to just watch, but if you want to follow along, you’ll need Excel of some sort
  • totally informal and chatty, so cameras on etc etc
• also want to plug the M365 Skills Hub for NHSS folks

The KIND network

• a social learning space for staff working with knowledge, information, and data across health, social care, and housing in Scotland
• we offer social support, free training, mentoring, community events, …
• Teams channel / mailing list

Session outline

A brief overview of Excel

• one of the oldest, and most widely used, pieces of desktop software
• ubiquitous in business, finance, health and social care…
• proprietary, closed-source, paid-for
• many versions

Central idea

• pieces of data are stored in cells
  • one value, one cell
• cells are arranged into rows and columns
  
• arranging data like this allows us to analyse it
• good data analysis helps make services better

Data should help…

• answering which/when questions
• seeing effects of changes
• comparing different areas
• looking at services over time
• …

One word of warning before the practical part

• there are lots of versions of Excel
• they all work slightly differently
• please don’t panic if what you see looks slightly different from what I’m showing you
• please ask if you’re not happy/confident!

Opening Excel (desktop)

Opening Excel (web)

Interface

Save, close, open

• save your new workbook
• close it
• re-open it (possibly from recent files)

References

• every cell in Excel has a reference - like its address
• references look like this: E7
  
  • E refers to a vertical column
  • 7 to a horizontal row

Data entry

• let’s add some data…
• we can type into the cells
  
• that data appears in the formula bar too

An example: school holidays

• https://www.scotborders.gov.uk/schools-learning/term-holiday-closure-dates/2
• make three headings in row 1: name, start_date, end_date
  

Values

• let’s add some values from the school holidays webpage
• name of holiday
• start date
• end date
  • dates usually go DD/MM/YYYY - as we’ll see, Excel does lots of helping when we enter dates…
  • …😱
• we’ll only need a few rows of data

Tidy data

• keep things consistent - spelling, case, formats, etc
  • one piece of data per cell
  • one instance per row (one school holiday per row)
  • one variable per column (a column of names, one of start dates…)

Tables

• we can convert this group of cells into a proper table
• click in one of your cells of data
  
• Insert > Table (or Ctrl + T)
  
• click OK
  

Lots of new things to see

Autofill

• we’ll add a formula to calculate how long our holidays are
• add a new column called days
• paste = 1 + (C2 - B2) into the first cell of that new column
  • and look out for our session on formulas…
• double-click the green fill handle to fill the rest of the column
  

Formatting

• we can change the way that our spreadsheet looks
• we can also change the way our values look

Cell formatting

• some examples
  
  • highlighting
  • bold
  • borders

Number formatting

• our dates are number formatted
• Excel dates are actually numbers (like 45583) formatted to look like dates
• 1900 dates!
• percentages, £, …

Conditional formatting

• we can also format based on values
  
• take care though - this can be both ugly, and inaccessible

Excel training sessions

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